


half human

by The_IPRE



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Archivist Adaine Abernant, Cabinet Man As A Statement, the magnus archives au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:41:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21979741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_IPRE/pseuds/The_IPRE
Summary: Statement of Fabian Aramais Seacaster about an abandoned arcade.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 35





	half human

**Author's Note:**

> A birthday gift for Miles [rabdoidal](https://rabdoidal.tumblr.com)!

“End recording.” Adaine put the statement she had been reading back on the desk, pushing her glasses up as she rubbed at the bridge of her nose. The statement had been about a man who had collapsed into a pile of bones when a book he carried everywhere was stolen, and she could almost feel the flesh sloughing off of her own skeleton.

That had been happening more often as of late. Not specifically the feeling that she was going to lose all her skin, although that did sometimes happen, but more that strange sensation that she was taking on the stories that she recorded. Vertigo and the tickle of legs crawling on the back of her neck and a dozen other things  _ really _ didn’t help lessen her anxiety, and she found herself getting even less sleep than she had before. 

Adaine knew that the dark circles under her eyes had just been getting worse, and she had her meds but they weren’t as helpful as they used to be and that was just one more thing on the list of things she had to do, but instead she just picked up the next statement to record.

She heard her recorder click on, but before she could open the folder her eyes were drawn to the doorway, a moment before a figure stepped into it.

Fabian was pinned in place by her gaze for a second, and then he visibly shrugged it off and sauntered into the room. “Hello, Adaine,” he said, dropping himself in the chair across from her. “Why haven’t you replaced this yet? I swear, it’s poking into me in at least three places.”

“Hi? And usually it’s just me, people don’t usually stay here for longer than just dropping things off.” Adaine let her unspoken question hang in the air while Fabian adjusted, crossing one leg over the other and avoiding her eyes.

He lifted a shoulder up in a shrug and put on that sharp smile he wore when he needed the world to believe he knew what he was doing. “It is your lucky day, then, because I am not just here to drop something off.” Fabian paused, and Adaine folded her hands and raised her eyebrows, waiting to see if he was going to actually tell her what he was doing. When she didn’t say anything, he sighed, floating a hand in the air in what was probably exasperation. “Fine, I was talking to Kristen, and she told me that I needed to give you a statement, which is honestly ridiculous, but now here I am, so.”

Adaine blinked at that. Fabian talked a lot, blustering with enough stories to fill the archive by himself, but he hadn’t given a statement before, and he seemed heavily opposed the times that she had asked. “You want to give a statement.”

“I don’t  _ want _ to, Adaine, but Kristen told me to, and if I had stayed and argued she would have, I don’t know, tried to make me actually deal with the issues she says I have and I know I don’t have, so. Here I am!” He smiled, put his hands on his knees as he leaned forward. “I am Fabian Aramais Seacaster, and I have a story to tell. Look, your recorder is already on, might as well!”

“Oh, it is. Huh.” Adaine pushed up her glasses and locked eyes with Fabian. “Statement taken directly from subject, February 29th, 2016. Statement begins.”

Fabian seemed to sit up straighter, dramatic movements of his arms becoming more intentional, pointed, even though they wouldn’t be caught by the tape recorder. “So, this particular story takes place in high school. Junior year, if my memory serves.” The tone of his voice said  _ of course it serves, _ with the constant undercurrent of  _ because I’m Fabian Aramais Seacaster _ . “It was Christmas Eve, and my buddy, Ragh – Ragh Barkrock, if you need his full name for research – called me up, and asked if I wanted to go fuck shit up. I said yes, of course.”

Fabian sighed, lowered his voice. Adaine did her best to keep her face neutral, because for the moment, his posturing seemed to be slipping away. It usually did when she took statements – for some reason, people seemed to want to tell the truth when the recorder got turned on – but Fabian was a fan of stories, especially ones that made him look good. From the hunch of his shoulders, she didn’t know if this would be one of those.

“My parents were, ah, what’s a good word. They were difficult to be around, sometimes, and the holidays didn’t exactly help with that. So when Ragh gave me an out, I grabbed my letterman jacket and left. We were on the football team together, and we weren’t really friends, because who has  _ friends _ in high school, but it was, again,  _ high school _ , so we both had a lot of unresolved issues. Easier to not discuss your unresolved issues together, you know? “ Fabian huffed out a laugh, but it wasn’t the kind that he usually threw around, the one that was all show and  _ look over here _ . It was just a self-deprecating huff of breath, and Adaine nodded, encouraging him to keep going.

Adaine hadn’t had quite the same high school experience – also bad, but in a different direction – but she let him keep talking. She wasn’t a therapist, despite once thinking that she might like to help people like that. Instead, she just listened, and recorded, and gently encouraged Fabian to keep talking.

“We met up at the old arcade. It was locked and dark – I don’t think that I had ever seen it open the whole time I lived in that town – but Ragh had a scowl on his face and a crowbar in each hand, so when he tossed me one I took it. See, football is a good way to get out your aggression, but there are still rules to it. You have to play by them, even if you don’t play  _ fair _ , but for all of the tackling it is still so…” Fabian ran his fingers through his carefully styled hair. “It’s so  _ civilized _ . What happened that night- well, football can’t really compare, can it?”

“We broke in – I was kind of surprised that there wasn’t an alarm, honestly, but by the time I was worrying about that Ragh had already broken the glass of the door and we were inside. It was- have you ever been in an abandoned place at night?” Adaine shook her head. Her high school experience was much more along the lines of staying home and barricading herself in her room as best she could. “Well, the only light came from the street lights outside and the flashlight on my phone, but the colors of the carpet were still garish. The glass and plastic of the games reflected light that I wasn’t able to see the source of, and it felt like the whole place was just, I don’t know, holding its breath.”

Fabian flexed his hand like he was remembering the feeling of a crowbar in his hands, and Adaine realized that she hadn’t blinked since Fabian started giving his statement. She did, just to show that she could, and that this was normal, and that Fabian was still just  _ Fabian _ .

“I realized that neither of us had said anything yet. It’s a strange thing, to just accept a crowbar from someone and break into an abandoned arcade, but I suppose that’s just what it’s like to be in high school. Well, it was all so quiet, and then, suddenly, it wasn’t. Ragh let out a scream, smashing his crowbar against one of the games, and there was no point in asking how his day was going  _ then _ , so I took a swing as well.”

As Fabian lifted his chin and grimaced, Adaine almost thought that his teeth were more pointed than they had been when he first came into her small office. “At some point one of us broke into the money collector of one of the games and there were quarters rolling across the floor. Honestly, most of that night was a blur, but there was...there was this one game that I stayed away from, at least at first. It had a little pixie on it, a tiny dude with a weird grin and big glasses, and above the screen were the words ‘Beat Biz.’” Fabaian cracked his neck, barked out another laugh. It seemed like there was an energy crawling under his skin as he spoke, fingers starting to move restlessly, twisting in his pressed pant legs or tugging at the air.

“The vibes of that game were just  _ putrid _ , so I stayed away, and I’m pretty sure that together Ragh and I pushed over a different game. But then, it was the only thing left untouched in the whole room. It almost looked like it was, I don’t know, glowing, or something, but there wasn’t really much light coming in from outside at that point, and I didn’t know where my phone had gone. I turned to look at Ragh, and I was pretty sure that he had started crying at some point. Then, something in his eyes...changed.” At that, Fabian stood up, paced a few steps, and then returned to stand in front of the desk, casting a shadow over the tape recorder and Adaine’s hands.

“He ran past me, and he swung his crowbar into the screen, and there had been a lot of noise in that arcade that night but that one seemed to break through everything else.” Fabian exhaled, crossed his arms, and looked at the wall over Adaine’s head.

“The game  _ screamed _ .”

With that he started pacing again, steps growing less and less measured and more movement for the sake of moving, letting off energy, chasing without running and the barely contained need to sprint. “He went crazy, hitting it again and again.” Fabian’s voice grew quiet. “I helped him push it over.” There was a tension in his shoulders, and his hands were flexing, and all Adaine could do – wanted to do, if she were honest, and she really didn’t want to be in this moment – was just watch. “I looked down, and there was blood on my sneakers. It was- the broken screen had shattered inwards, and the glass was stuck in some sort of  _ meat _ , and the game was oozing  _ blood _ onto the floor, and it was soaking into my  _ socks _ , and Ragh was still there, crying and screaming and attacking the thing with a crowbar.”

All the energy seemed to leave Fabian at that, body tense and hands curled at his sides as some horror played out before his eyes again. Adaine glanced down at the recorder to make sure that it was still recording. It was.

“I went home. I couldn’t stay, and I knew that if I tried to get Ragh to stop he would attack me just as brutally as he had that machine. Don’t ask me how I knew, but I  _ did _ , and so I just went home. My papa saw the blood on my shoes and he congratulated me.” Fabian sat back down. “Ragh was back at school in January, but something was different. He seemed...hollow. After that night, he didn’t invite me out again. I think...I think I’m glad that he didn’t. I don’t know if I would have gone, or if I would have been able to escape again.”

Adaine spoke, throat dry even as her voice was clear and even. “Statement ends.”

When Fabian blinked, he seemed to come back to himself, and he drew his shoulders up. Those layers of defenses rose again, and hidden was the high school boy who had been lost to that destruction of the arcade. “Well, that was, ah-”

Adaine clicked her recorder off before she spoke. She wasn’t a therapist, she was just someone who was supposed to listen and watch and record, but this was her friend. She didn’t want to be someone who only wanted to observe. “Fabian, are you okay?”

Fabian shook his head and took a breath, and for a moment Adaine thought that he was actually going to process an emotion for the first time in his life. Then, she smelled the copper tang of blood, faint but unable to get away from in the small room, and Fabian lifted his chin and put that smile back on again. “Tell Kristen that I gave a statement so she gets off my back about it.”

With that, he stood up and left, taking the smell of blood with him.

Adaine was left alone in her small office, surrounded by files and dust and stories that were not her own, and she had the sinking feeling that she wasn’t going to be getting much sleep that night.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to leave a comment or kudos, or come talk to me on tumblr at [the-ipre](https://the-ipre.tumblr.com)!


End file.
